A law blog addressing the foci of 3 intrepid law geeks, specializing in their respective fields of knowledge management, internet marketing and library sciences, melding together to form the Dynamic Trio.

Pages

4/17/14

"Ooooooh,
it's a computer for your face! It's got a camera and can give you
directions! It's just like your phone was permanently positioned 3 feet
in front of your right eye! Woo hoo! I can't wait to get one!"

I
wasn't so sure. I didn't jump on board. I just didn't see the utility.
Yes, it's a cool concept, but the functionality wasn't there. Maybe in a
few years it would become something functional and interesting, but I
certainly wasn't going to waste my money on something that was little
more than a half-baked concept.

A week ago Google
announced that they were opening up Glass sales for one day only. On
Tuesday, if you were willing to shell out $1500 dollars, this pre-beta,
sub-functional, ugly cyborg technology could be yours! The one day sale
was met with a barrage of negative press. Journalists and bloggers
across the world almost universally decried this Google foray into
wearable tech as not yet ready for prime time, or elitist technology, or
as little more than a toy for wealthy geeks. One Business Insider
journalist told his harrowing tale of being assaulted on the streets of San Francisco for wearing his Glass in public. Glass has been banned in some coffee shops and bars. Most tellingly, the term Glasshole
has graduated from Silicon Valley/Northern California in-joke to
official entry in the American Lexicon. I even heard Michael Strahan say
it on Live! (Kelly was aghast.) Boy, when the pendulum swings, that
sucker swings hard! By Tuesday morning, it was clear to me that everyone
in the world finally agreed with my original assessment of Google Glass. So, I bought one.

You've
heard the phrase "that many people can't be wrong"? Well, any time
consensus holds that I am that right about something, you can be sure
I'm going to seriously question that assessment. The "wisdom of the
crowds" does not refer to the crowd's purchasing prowess after all. If
that many people, most of whom have never tried or even seen the
technology, hate it with such a viciousness, that is a sure sign that
there is something there worth exploring.

So Hello World! I am about to become a Glasshole.

Now,
I don't intend to wear the damn thing around all the time. Mostly
because I don't want to be beaten up by the poor disadvantaged
proletarian children carrying their 1970s-era super computers in their
pockets instead of wearing them on their face. ("Down with the face
computers, long live the pocket!") But also because, I suspect they will
make me look even dorkier than usual. And also, in a nod to all of my
privacy lawyer friends who just crossed me off their Christmas Card
list, because there are some real, gray area, privacy concerns
surrounding wearable technology in public. Our social norms, let alone our laws, have not yet
assimilated wearable, always-on, camera computers.

That said, this is happening people! Wearable computing is here. It will only become more prevalent, and we have to learn to live with it. More to the point, we will have to learn to work with it. While I
can imagine any number of futures for Google Glass and its like - everything from
laws preventing its use in public, to public distribution for all school
children - I have no doubt that one day I will start my working day, not
by logging into my desktop computer, but by physically putting my
computer on my body. And I would bet that that day is closer to 2020 than it is to 2030.

I
understand that Google has a 30 day money back guarantee, so if it
turns out that my original assessment (and the rest of the world's since
Tuesday) is right, maybe I'll ship it back to Mountain View in the next month. In the meantime, please
don't worry about people calling me a Glasshole, I've been called
something very similar for most of my life and I probably won't even notice.

Glass just arrived this morning. Difficult to use with my glasses, but it came with a set of frames to put prescription lenses in. Guess I'll have to take a trip to LensCrafters.

So far, I'm impressed with the UI. A little clunky, but much better than I was expecting. Will take some getting used to. Reminds me a lot of 1st gen iPhone. You can tell there is a lot of potential, but it is not yet realized.

Ryan, if you hate it, you can ship them to me in Canada rather than returning it to Google. Despite the negative suggestions, I think Glass has the potential to be a game adjuster, in legal, and in tech time.

It is best to be ahead of the curve, even when it is a hilly curvy climb on a gravel road with no safety rails that to not see what is coming.

You know those dishwasher is clean/dirty magnets? Picture a Front camera is off/on name badge...could be entertaining.

The glasses are just a toy for the rich geeks as you pointed. Used it a few times. Instead of entertainment it has nothing to do with day to day life. You enter a few places, and people will start looking at you insecurely.